Black-box data and video images from a camera mounted in the nose of an Amtrak locomotive might help state and local investigators understand a crash that killed two children in an SUV this week at an East Durham rail crossing.
"It will definitely be used in the investigation," Amtrak spokeswoman Karina Romero said Thursday.
The southbound Amtrak Carolinian was traveling at 74 mph, on tracks where the legal limit is 79 mph, when it struck a Ford Explorer at the Ellis Road crossing at 5:19 p.m. Wednesday.
Witnesses and Durham police said the driver, Deborah Bingham, was caught in heavy traffic and trapped on the tracks before warning signals sounded and four protective gates were lowered on both sides of the tracks.
Bingham was injured, and her sons Calvin Brandon, 9, and Hassan Bingham, 6, were killed.
Many locomotives are equipped with video cameras to record what the engineer sees on the tracks ahead before a crash. A so-called "incident recorder," like an airplane's black box, preserves data on how fast the train is going and when the engineer sounds the horn and hits the brakes.
Fatal crash videos are not released to the public, Romero said.
Pat Simmons, rail division director for the state Department of Transportation, said the Ellis Road crossing is designed with bells and lights to warn drivers 36 seconds before an approaching train reaches the crossing. The four gates descend four seconds after the lights begin flashing.
The Ellis Road crossing is near a Norfolk Southern rail yard. It's possible, Simmons said, that Bingham looked in the wrong direction when she heard the warning bell and mistakenly believed at first that she was not in danger.
"The thought is that she may have looked left and saw there was a train working in the yard, and not looked right - which was where the Carolinian was coming from," Simmons said.
Making strides
North Carolina has more than 3,700 grade-level rail crossings on public roads. About 2,000 of them have flashing light signals and gates, and another 400 have signals only.
The state is regarded as a national leader in reducing crashes at rail crossings. A new Federal Railroad Administration report estimates that 19 lives were saved between 1995 and 2004 in the DOT's Sealed Corridor program. The state has closed 46 crossings between Raleigh and Charlotte, and crossing gates have been upgraded at 140 more.
"Working in safety and trying to build something, there's not like this super pot of money to do everything you need to do," Simmons said. "So you make progressive improvements, which is what we've done through management of the safety program."
The state took steps to make the Ellis Road crossing safer after a crash in 2001, when a woman drove her car around the crossing gates and was killed by a train. Two more gates were added to prevent cars from going around, a frequent cause of train-car crashes.
A DOT proposal for $5.3 billion in federal high-speed rail funds includes money for a $13 million bridge that would separate cars and trains at the Ellis Road crossing - and for similar grade separations at 34 other rail crossings between Charlotte and Raleigh.
